This MBO has 6 S-ATA connectors on it for setting up a RAID0, 1, 5, or 10. The MBO manual states; "when using the connectors in standard IDE mode, connect the primary (boot) hard disk drive to the SATA 1/2/5 Connector. Refer to the table below for the recommended SATA hard disk drive connections."

I currently have the BIOS set so the SATA connectors are in IDE mode. (I tried to set them in SATA mode under this config and that started a whole other set of issues. I put it back to IDE)

The two SATA devices I'm using are connected to SATA3/4. I connected this way because my thought is that neither one of these drives are the Boot drive and if your not a boot drive your a slave. (this could be where the issue is)

The following 2 drives are connected via the IDE connector on the MBO.

The 160GB ATA/100 Maxtor has the OS loaded on it and the jumper is set to Master. It is connnected to the primary/black IDE connector. In the BIOS I have this drive set as number 2 in the boot priority.

The IDE CDRW has the jumper set to Slave. It is connected to the secondary/Gray connector on the IDE cable. In the BIOS I have this drive set at number 1 in the boot priority.

Every time I start up the system I get the following error: No Master IDE H.D.D. Found. Press F1 To Continue. I press F1 and the OS loads up and all looks to be ok. I would like to get rid of this error at start up. Second and less improtant; I would like to be able to take advantage of the two SATA drives and run them in SATA mode, but I can live with out that.
I'm open to all questions and suggestions. Sorry for the long post.

you could try setting the drive to cable select... and make sure that the optical drive and the HD don't share the same IDE cable.... also... try turning off the functionality of the SATA in the BIOS if your not using it.... also.... try to stick with SATA only... as it is probably giving that error because you have SATA enabled stuff and none of them are the master.... (I still use IDE myself... but if you want to make use of SATA... stick with SATA and try not to mix it up) hope those suggestions help

WarLord725, currently I have the SATA truned off on the Bios. All connections are running as IDE. My MBO only has one IDE connector, so I'm not sure how to have both IDE devices on different cables. You think if I change the location of the OS from the IDE drive to the SATA drive it would make a difference?

That was one of the things I was going to try, but I wanted to see if there were any other suggestions before I remove the OS from the IDE drive and reload it on the SATA drive.

As mentioned in my question; this MBO has 6 SATA ports. If I'm running them in IDE mode does that apply to all the ports you think or just the two slave ones. see my original question for config of the SATA ports on this MBO.